


Six Fulms Under

by KivaEmber



Series: Wine Cellar [40]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Established Relationship, Implied Relationships, M/M, Major Character Injury, Male Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Miqo'te Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Once again WoL is in a pickle of his own making, Post-Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood, Rescue Missions, how will he get out of this mess this time?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-22
Packaged: 2019-07-14 02:19:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16030952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KivaEmber/pseuds/KivaEmber
Summary: It turns out battling a King Behemoth on an unstable cliff face at Witchdrop was a terrible, awful, andfatalidea.





	1. Chapter 1

Aza woke up to the groaning of shifting ice.

He was cold, he realised groggily, flexing his numb fingers as he forced his eyes open. Frost clung to his thick eyelashes and cast everything in a strange blurriness until he blinked the little ice-flakes away. Deep, pale blue loomed over him, churned up snow ilms from his nose, his shuddering breaths rising as a cloud of white. He took a moment to just breathe.

He had no idea where he was or what happened.

Gingerly, he shifted his arm to press his gloved hand flat against the floor, groaning in pain when the muscles in his shoulder felt like they were pulling taut over razor wire. Dark spots wobbled in his vision, but he gritted his teeth and took that pain, teasing it into energy-giving aether and _pushed_ himself _up_ -

And almost seized from the white-hot agony that _ripped_ through his side the second he lifted an _ilm_ off the floor. Something had- oh, _fuck_. He felt something _tear_ , and he just- he collapsed, panting and gasping like a beached fish, wet warmth blossoming at that _white-hot pain_ spot. He had to- he had to, not. Not think. He took that pain and breathed and breathed and breathed until the bile stopped trying to rise in his throat and his head stopped spinning nauseously. His vision was all blurry again, his cheeks wet as he shook violently from the shock of that _pain_.

 _Oh, fuck,_ a part of his brain was squeaking, _oh fuck, that had hurt. That had_ **_hurt_**.

He didn’t know how long he stayed like that. Eventually the shaking stopped, and he choked out short, wet gasps as he made himself roll onto his back. The ripping sensation didn’t happen again, but… oh Gods, he felt like he was going to puke, his side alight with a cold, burning ache. Above him, he saw… ice. Broken chunks and pillars of ice, all collapsed in a precariously balanced heap a scant few fulms above him, not even high enough for him to stand up. All the air left his lungs when he saw it, realising _that_ was the groaning thing. The ice above him, looking one stiff breeze away from collapsing and crushing him beneath unyielding, solid permafrost.

Aza picked up that moment of terrified realisation, boxed it up, and put it in the corner of his mind to deal with never. He painfully moved his head to the side, saw that was lying in some kind of… ravine? A hole? He didn’t know, but the wall next to him was dark, frosty granite, and when he turned his head the other way, he saw where a massive chunk of ice had pierced the snowy floor, acting as a makeshift, cracked pillar for the ice creaking above him. There was a gap wide enough for a Miqo’te to squirm through.

It looked as if… right, he’d been in Coerthas, near Witchdrop. There was an emergency, a… a King Behemoth? Emmanellain had been… with cannons and… it was like a gaping, black hole in his memory. He couldn’t quite _remember_ …

 _Not important_ , survival instincts said in Fray’s voice, _it doesn’t matter how this happened_. _Figure out how you can_ **_get out_**.

Right. He needed mobility.

Despite this determined conclusion he didn’t immediately move. The pain was so intense that he had to build himself up to it, breathing deep and slow and flexing his fingers and tensing his muscles, feeling where all the pain hotspots were (everywhere), feeling which way felt easier to move (neither), preparing himself for the burst of agony (difficult). After ten minutes where he dithered and procrastinated and tried not to throw up and then pass out, he tried propping himself up on his… ‘okayish’ elbow.

It hurt like _fuck_.

He swallowed the sob that almost left him, biting down on his tongue as he forced himself up and looked down to see- his side, split open. Something sharp (- _King Behemoth’s horn catching edge of his gambeson, spurt of bright red as it gored through his side, fuck-_ ) had torn through him, and the wound had _frozen_. He could see the glitter of ice where the blood had frosted over into some ugly, frozen scab, the gambeson fused into it like some makeshift seal. A thick dribble of bright red pushed past it all though, and next to him he could see the dark brown patch on the snowy ground. He must’ve… the wound must’ve frozen to the snow beneath him. Oh, Gods, he was lucky he hadn’t torn the whole scab off when he moved. No doubt he would’ve bled out or passed out again and then died of hypothermia or something equally stupid.

Everything else, though… it all seemed intact. His left leg was broken, he could tell at a glance, and his left hip was… just agony. He didn’t even dare try to touch or move it. Every inhale brought stabbing pains against _every rib_ and even his sternum shifted weirdly. He gingerly lowered himself on his back, a whimper catching in the back of his throat even every nerve just lit up. Pain was power, suffering was strength, but this was… this was just broken. _Everything_ felt broken. He had a fleeting, desperate idea of maybe bullying himself to try and slither out of here but, Gods, he doubted he could even _crawl_ anywhere, let alone climb through those narrow gaps in the ice.

Above him the ice creaked, tiny chips dusting down. It was all shifting, and Aza knew it was only a matter of time before his pocket crumbled in on itself. He couldn’t just lie here, hoping for rescue. Teleporting was out too, as the pain was so absolute he couldn’t even try to focus on the spell – not even getting into the dangerously low levels of his aether. What little fumes he had left was fuelling Living Dead keeping him conscious and semi-alert. No, he needed to _move_.

He tried to do that.

* * *

Aza passed out from the pain after crawling exactly one ilm.

* * *

“The Lord Commander is going to _kill me_.”

Emmanellain whispered this under his breath as he anxiously wrung his hands, taut as a stressed bowstring. His knights were bustling around him, equally worried and grim, as they began setting up a rope pulley system to try and traverse the massive _crater_ the King Behemoth and Aza left behind during their epic battle on Witchdrop.

The entire cliff shelf had collapsed in on itself after one too many Meteor spells barraged the frozen earth. Emmanellain had witnessed the entire thing from a ridgeline quarter a malm away from the battlefield, commanding his knights to launch cannon fire and ballistae shots at the King Behemoth in support of Aza. The way his stomach had dropped when the entirety of Witchdrop had splintered apart and crumbled… Aza had disappeared from all the ice and stone that collapsed into the now gaping ravine, and the King Behemoth had howled in rage as it followed him. Hopefully the fall killed it… but if it had, then Aza’s prospects were… well.

Emmanellain felt a cold sweat bead his brow at the thought of dragging himself to Ishgard, to present himself to Ser Aymeric and tell him that he failed to keep Aza safe. That the Warrior of Light had _died_ by being crushed to death under ice and snow and a possible King Behemoth carcass after plummeting over one hundred _fulms_. Oh, Gods, there was no way he could survive, was there? _No one_ survived Witchdrop! It was why they used to throw people off it!

Halone help him. He was going to have to fish Aza’s corpse out of there, and it was going to be all mangled and… Emmanellain felt queasy at the thought, remembering the bodies that he had the misfortune to see after they were tossed from Witchdrop. The Holy See used to parade them as ‘Devout Martyrs’ who proved their loyalty and piety by leaping from Witchdrop and into Halone’s Halls. But, _really,_ they had been thinly veiled warnings, that this was the fate of all who didn’t stay in line, who doubted the wisdom of the Holy See. It didn’t happen anymore, but those mangled, crushed corpses still gave Emmanellain nightmares to this day.  

 _I cannot be cruel enough to show Ser Aymeric that…_ he thought gloomily, but he also knew Ser Aymeric wouldn’t accept that he was dead without proof. He would have to find a body at least, even if it meant traversing the creaking ice-trap that Witchdrop had become.

“Lord Emmanellain,” a low, smooth voice interrupted his spiralling thoughts, and Emmanellain turned to it.

It was Ser Basile, who was born into the branch family of House Dzemael. They were all highly encouraged to join the builder’s guild to perpetuate Dzemael’s superiority in stonework and architecture, but Basile was considered a bit of a black sheep in his family and pushed to join the Dragoons. Emmanellain knew that if Basile hadn’t been incredibly talented at it, Dzemael would have kicked up quite a bit of a fuss for some lowly branch family member having a more prestigious and influential position than their heir, Lord Tedalgrinche.

“Ser Basile,” Emmanellain said with some relief. Basile had been busy tackling reports of a dragon excursion near Skyfire Lockes when this mess happened, so he was pleased he got here so quickly, “I assume you have been briefed on the… situation?”

Basile nodded solemnly. The Dragoon helmet gave him an intimidating, mysterious air, with how it hid his eyes, but his mouth could be clearly seen quirking into a reassuring smile, “I’ve clambered into such death traps before, m’lord,” he said, “And the Warrior of Light would find some way of surviving, I’m sure. I will have him out before the hour is out.”

“I appreciate your optimism…” Emmanellain sighed, “But we need to take into consideration the- the worst-case scenario. If he’s-”

“I’ll get him out, m’lord,” Basile said, almost gently.

Emmanellain wrung his hands again. He was aware he looked horribly anxious and not- not the staunch pillar of unflappable professionalism that Haurchefant would have been, but would his half-brother be calm in this situation? Knowing Haurchefant he would’ve most likely dived headfirst into that ice-trap the moment he realised Aza was trapped in it. No, he was not Haurchefant, so… so.

He took a steadying breath and forced his hands to lower, “You are to search as well as you can, Ser Basile,” he said, relieved when his voice didn’t wobble, “Your ability to Jump will mean you will have a better chance finding a path down, but… but you are not to endanger yourself unnecessarily. If it becomes too dangerous, you will withdraw up here and we will find another way.”

Basile, thankfully, did not protest. He nodded solemnly, “Yes, m’lord.”

“If you find him alive, Halone willing, use the potions and the like to stabilise him if necessary,” Emmanellain continued, “Depending on his condition, you may have to climb back out and lead chirugeons back to him, but it’s preferable that you get him out if he can be safely moved. If you find him dead…” Here, he faltered but swallowed the lump down in his throat, “I-If you find him dead, and his body is recoverable, bring it back up here, and we will… prepare it for… the Lord Commander.”

Basile nodded again, and Emmanellain turned to the remains of Witchdrop. The sun was shining brightly down on it, making the chunks of ice and snow and frosted granite glitter prettily in the light. The entire ravine was almost filled in now, and Emmanellain wasn’t sure how to feel about Witchdrop no longer having the deadly height it once had. It was like burying a very unpleasant part of Ishgard’s past without really… confronting it. No one really spoke about the ‘heretics’ who died here.

Emmanellain only prayed that Aza wasn’t the last victim Witchdrop claimed.

* * *

Basile was a little nervous.

He’d been present during the Steps of Faith, for both Vishap and Nidhogg’s assault. He’d seen what an absolute force of nature the Warrior of Light was, and he found it difficult to consider how out of everything Ser Aza fought against, it was a collapsing cliff that killed him. It just seemed too… mundane of a way to go. He had to be alive, just trapped and irritated. Basile liked to stay positive, after all.

It was what got him through the darkest days of the Theocracy, before the Lord Commander changed everything for the better. Staying positive let him endure House Dzemael’s petty sniping and manipulations – well, that and quietly asking Estinien to post him as far as physically possible from his family’s grasping claws. The Azure Dragoon had obliged him by pulling strings to have him posted to Camp Dragonhead, which also managed to double as an insulting slap to House Dzemael. Basile still smiled at the memory of Lord Dzemael’s horrified face when he realised that Basile would be subordinate to House Fortemps’s infamous bastard.

His chest twinged at the thought of Haurchefant, with his warmth and friendly smiles, and he quickly buried those feelings as unnecessary. Positive thinking, he told himself, standing at the very edge of what used to be Witchdrop and scanning for a good location for him to leap to. It was a maze of stone and ice, with gaps and shifting tunnels for a lanky Elezen like him to shimmy through. He ran his gauntleted hand over the rope around his waist, double checking it was firm and wouldn’t come loose.

From the corner of his eye he could see Medic Leona marching up to him, clutching a thick, leather bag between her hands. He turned to face her, pasting on one of his smiles, and readily accepted the bag she pushed into his arms. She was one of the few Ishgardian Hyurs posted at Camp Dragonhead, and she was always so grumpy at having to ‘get a crick in my neck staring at you tall assholes all day’.

“I don’t need to explain half of these to you,” she said, pulling the flap of the bag open and revealing the brightly coloured potions in fortified vials, “But just in case: the potions will seal up any open wounds or serious internal bleeding, the orange tonic there- no, there, that’s if he has difficulty breathing or a punctured lung. This…”

Leona carefully withdrew a vial with its glass an ilm thick. Inside was a feather, a softly glowing one where its colours gently rippled from red and orange, like a flickering flame, “This is Phoenix Down. This is if he’s completely _fucked_ , okay? If you use this, you got to get him out of there within the Golden Hour before the aether starts burning through him. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Basile said, watching as she carefully put the volatile vial back, closed the lid, and took a step away. He shouldered the bag, tightening its straps until it was snug against him. For this adventure, he had changed out of the spiky, dark Dragoon armour – if he was going to be squirming through narrow gaps and the like, it’d just be a hindrance. So, he wore simple leather armour and furs instead, with spiked boots to help him keep purchase on the slippery surface.

“Lord Emmanellain is currently praying to Halone for the Warrior of Light to be safe,” Leona confided to him, “He’s literally sat in the snow, promising to give up all kinds of things. I guess he doesn’t want to tell the Lord Commander that…”

She went awkwardly silent.

“Hm, it’ll be fine,” Basile said airily, turning back to the hole he was going to crawl around in, “Ser Aza is not so easily killed. I saw him survive Vishap stepping on him, you know. If he can survive that…”

Leona just sighed. She was oddly cynical for a medic, he thought wryly, but he didn’t prod her about it. A cold, cutting wind was beginning to bluster around them now, and he adjusted his footing, considering.

“Either way, he’ll be coming back up,” Basile said, “Alive or as a corpse.”

Somewhere below them, ice shifting with a low, scraping groan, and for a moment, it looked almost as if something was moving down there. But it was so brief that Basile passed it off as his imagination and nerves. It was fine. Positive thinking. The Warrior of Light will be injured but fine.

* * *

Buried beneath several tonze of ice and rock, half-crushed against the bottom of Witchdrop, a King Behemoth heaved a ragged, hot breath, its pale eyes squinting open. With a violent twitch of its shoulder, it began, slowly and carefully, to wriggle free. It nostrils flared, hot pants of air whistling past bared fangs as it tasted blood on the wind. Nearby was Prey. Nearby was _wounded_ Prey.

Nearby was the owner of the sword buried hilt deep between its shoulder blades.

With a snarl, the Behemoth slowly, determinedly, began to claw itself free.  


	2. Chapter 2

Witchdrop wasn’t silent.

Basile waited as the ice settled once more around him, the violent, harsh cracks of shifting rock and ice and snow almost deafening him. Every time something shifted, Basile could feel his pulse creep higher when the noise of it echoed viciously, waiting with baited breath to see if the ice trembling beneath his feet was going to crumble. All it would take was one bad shift for him to be crushed to death between ice and stone, something he was painfully aware of, once he was in the thick of it.  

But Basile and Fear were good friends by now, so he bottled that fast-pulse, palm-sweating emotion and let it fuel his aching arms and legs onwards. He had descended about forty fulms by his reckoning, wriggling, squirming, jumping and climbing down harsh, smooth and _unforgiving_ surfaces until his fingers were cut and numb from it. It was difficult to tell up and down, left and right, in this maze of ice – his reflection caught and scattered in the uneven, cut surfaces, and if it weren’t for the rope around his waist, he would have no idea of the path back.

His breath misted before him in a haze that lingered, chips of ice dusting over his shoulders as he considered his next move. All had gone still and quiet now, though Basile knew it would only be for a few moments. He had no idea what was causing it, but _something_ was rumbling deep in the earth, at the very bottom of the chasm, and Basile was very much praying that it _wasn’t_ the King Behemoth trying to thrash free. He’d rather deal with the creepy Voidsent rumoured to live at the bottom of Witchdrop instead of _that_ unstoppable force of nature.

Basile cautiously inched forwards on the thick chunk of ice he was balanced on, leaning over the edge to see that he had two potential paths to take. One went further across to his far left, and the other straight down. If he remembered correctly, Aza would be more to the left from his current position, but Basile had no way of knowing if that left path went further down. Perhaps it’d be best to go straight down instead? Get to the bottom first and see if it was easier to search that way?

He loosely clasped his hands together in a mockery of prayer, sighing out his indecision. Were he a more pious man, he would probably pray to Halone for guidance. As it was, Basile knew that these things had to be dealt with by mortal men, that the Gods showed their hand through the actions of people. Perhaps it was presumptuous for him to believe he was acting on Halone’s behalf here, but right now there was no Fury, pointing the way to him, or holding up the ice, or rescuing the Warrior of Light Herself. There was just Basile, black sheep of House Dzemael and a recklessly brave idiot plunging deep into the ice on the scant hope that the Warrior of Light was alive.

Basile paused.

Warrior of _Light_ …

Tales were that Hydaelyn, the Mothercrystal, directly intervened to save her champion when the situation was dire enough. It was how he survived being in the epicentre of Ultima, if the reports from Eorzea were true. It was how he survived so many things no mortal man could. While the Mothercrystal was not a deity Ishgard officially recognised, her existence was more physical than Halone’s. A guilty squirm wriggled tight in his belly, as if expecting an Inquisitor to claw up from the dark depths below to yell ‘HERETIC’ at him for thinking such, but… well, if the Mothercrystal truly cherished her champion that much, to directly touch the mortal world, then _perhaps_ …?

Basile took a fortifying breath and clasped his hands harder, pressing his forehead against his gloved knuckles. It felt strange and wrong to pray to something else but pray he did.

“Hydaelyn,” he murmured, trying not to feel foolish, “Guide me. Let me find your Warrior of Light. Show me which path to take. Er, please.”

His voice echoed back to him, distorted, and when his whisper faded, silence pressed in on all sides. Ice creaked, rocks groaned, but there was no heavenly reply, nothing to indicate which path he should take. Just empty silence.

Basile sighed. Typical.

“Left path it is,” he muttered quietly, shifting his position to prepare to leap across when-

Something flickered in his peripheral.

He paused, half-coiled in preparation to Jump, and slowly turned his head. There, on the path leading directly down, something was flickering like a dying light. Curious, he shifted more to face the odd thing, surprised to see that it was a half-broken ice crystal embedded in a clump of rocks crushed between two pillars of ice. Its pale blue light flickered weakly, rapidly, and Basile could feel the aether move oddly. It felt… pure, almost.

Basile hesitated for a long moment, but eventually moved. Instead of leaping across to the left path, he carefully climbed down, towards the flickering ice crystal. As he neared, the glow faded, and the crystal dulled back into an inert state with the odd aether dissipating. Basile carefully balanced himself on the frozen rock it was embedded in and peered down at the narrow, jagged tunnel next to it that led into total, frozen darkness.  

“Well,” he said, “I guess that’s a clear enough sign then.”

Bracing himself, Basile started to climb down, hearing the ice around him once more start to groan and heave.

* * *

For the second time, Aza woke up in blinding pain.

A bone-deep fatigue followed closely on pain’s heels, though, and Aza struggled to squint his eyes open. Frost clung to his eyelashes, and he let out a shuddering, short breath when he realised that a peculiar numbness was beginning to sink in through his limbs. Without thinking, he tried pushing a pulse of aether through the tiny fire crystals he stashed throughout his armour, to reignite the gentle warming they had, only to get that _awful_ swooping, stomach churning dizzy spell that came when you had no aether left to give.

He felt a splutter of warmth though, so. Worth it.

“Fuuuuck…” he rasped out, his throat feeling raw as sandpaper as he squeezed his eyes shut, breathing through the painful nausea clawing at his insides. He was sickeningly aware of his pulse, thumping like a drumbeat at his temples, his heart sluggishly squeezing in his chest, as his body stubbornly clung to life even though there was nothing but fumes left. He could feel something hot burn against his breastbone, pulsing like a beating heartbeat, where he normally kept the crystal…

The _crystal_ … he realised sluggishly, the Crystal of Light he stowed near to his heart, if only because the damn thing had saved his hide more times than he could count. Each slow pulse felt like a hot stab right through his ribs, but it… it was keeping him focused, alert. He should’ve known. Hydaelyn wouldn’t let her most useful tool die in such a stupid way without dealing with the whole ‘the world is gonna end’ thing first.

But divine intervention or not, the truth was Hydaelyn was too weak to do anything else to help him. What little aether was pulsing through him was barely enough to stay conscious and breathing – his body was still succumbing to the cold elements, his body was still _broken_ , too weak to even accelerate his healing with a burst of aether – he was still _trapped_ and unable to _move._

Fuck.

“Hey… Hydaelyn, o-or, Minfillia or… whoever,” he wheezed, “It’d be g-great if… you teleport me, or… s-somethin’ right… right now.”

His words echoed back at him, raspy and weak, until nothing but the creaking, shifting ice answered him. Aza closed his eyes, feeling a sort of bleak, helpless laugh trying to bubble up through him. Really, what did he expect? Aside from shielding him from Ultima, Hydaelyn had never been able to truly protect him. Everything he did was done by his own hands, really. Made sense. If she had been able to solve this problem herself eons ago, then the world (worlds? Alternative dimensions? Parallel worlds??) wouldn’t be in the state it was now.

“Okay…” he said, flexing his stiff and numb fingers to keep the blood flowing, “Okay.”

Looks like he was on his own. Okay.

Letting the Crystal of Light take the full burden of keeping him awake and _alive_ , Aza dug _deep_ into himself. Living Dead spluttered, lighting his nerves with an agony that was both _sweet_ and _awful_ , making his limbs feel almost lifelessly loose as he broke far beyond his body’s natural limits. He sucked in a deep breath that felt like needling knives scraping the inside of his ribcage and pushed himself _up_.

His vision immediately erupted into bursts of black and red spots, his vision tunnelling alarmingly – but Aza grit his teeth, felt Living Dead surge through him until distorted sparks of angry red aether spat and hissed around him. Up, up, up… c’mon… _up_ …!

 He sat up.

Okay. Okay, _good_. Now, hands and knees.

“F-Fuck…” he half-choked, unashamed to feel tears stinging his eyes as he rolled over with agonising slowness. His stomach felt like it was trying to crawl up his throat when he finally settled on his hands and knees, his entire body shaking like a shitting dog as Living Dead continued to splutter and heave through him. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he was holding it for _way_ too long. He could feel that sweet-agony aether begin to turn, to _burn_ and _gnaw_ at his nerves, but he _needed_ to keep _moving_!

There was a hole, not far from him. It led up, so he’d have to climb. He could do that. _He could do that_.

Aza crawled, slowly, limbs stiff and robotic as he forced his body on through sheer will and aetherical manipulations that were both disturbing and impressive. He was panting shallowly by the time he reached that narrow hole, mere fulms from where he’d been, his body soaked with cold sweat. Sharp pains were clawing at his insides, and he could taste metal in his mouth. His vision was swimming, smudges of grey and pale blue swirling into an incoherent mess. Fuck. He couldn’t…

He reached out blindly, trying to find the edge of that hole but-

Living Dead fizzled out.

The arm supporting his weight buckled instantly, and he fell _hard_.

“…!”

 _Gods_. Aza shuddered violently where he lay in a crumpled heap, unable to even _scream_ from the shot of white-hot agony that just wrenched through him from the rough landing. Bile hit the back of his throat, and he only just managed to swallow it down as he squeezed his eyes shut, his cheeks damp from tears. Fuck. Fuck fuck _fuck_.

There was an odd, despairing kind of resignation that swept over him then. His body’s limitations were pretty damn clear. He _physically_ could not go on any further. Willpower and his freakish aether control meant _nothing_ in this situation. He was alone, trapped and too wounded to save himself. He had to hope Emmanellain could dig him out, which, no offence to the man but Witchdrop was fucking _deep_. He’d die of starvation or blood loss or _infection_ by the time he was dug out.

Something prickled in his belly, something tight and sharp, and Aza belatedly recognised it as fear. He didn’t want to die here. He had so much shit left to do – so much life to live, after the Twelve fucked him over with that shitty childhood of his. Fuck. What the hell did he do in his previous life to deserve all this?

He must’ve drifted.  His thoughts went flat after that, too stubborn to die, but too exhausted to try moving again. He shivered, the fire crystals laced through his clothing finally begin to fizzle out, and he wondered if hypothermia was as kind as people said it was. You started to feel warm, and then sleepy, and you died very peacefully…

_‘sccrrpt’_

Aza’s ear weakly flicked up, his eyes squinting open. His cheek was pressed against the frozen ground, practically numb, and a thin coating of frost almost glued his eyelashes together. He blinked slowly a few times to try and clear his blurry sight, and he listened to something… scrape and slither somewhere above him.

The Crystal of Light gave its strongest pulse, and faintly, almost indistinctly, he heard a voice murmur; _‘…ist...en…’_

* * *

Basile very nearly kicked the Warrior of Light in the face.

The sequence of events were thus: after scrambling, slipping and sliding down this awful, claustrophobic frozen tunnel for the better part of an hour, his way lit up by a weakly charged lightning crystal dangling from his neck, Basile spotted… something. It looked like an _end_ of some sort, the ground perhaps, and relieved that this awful leg of the journey was almost over, decided to do a reckless drop to the supposed ground below-

Only to realise at the very last, split second that the _something_ was a _someone_.

Professional evasive manoeuvres (read: panicked flailing that almost brained his head against the edge of the tunnel) ensured that his spiked boot didn’t meet the Warrior of Light’s head – but it did mean he tumbled in an ungraceful heap _next_ to his head, his elbows and knees slightly bruised from his ill-advised drop.

“Thank the Fury no one saw that,” he muttered to himself, quickly checking the rope to see it was still bound tight around him. Good. He cautiously pushed himself up stooping awkwardly on his knees when he realised the little pocket he was in was _tiny_. By some miraculous stroke of luck, the heavy granite and ice had collapsed into a somewhat stable shelter, with one tiny, narrow tunnel leading directly up. The Twelve must’ve had a hand in this.

He shoved his wonderings aside. The room was stable and fit for purpose for now, that’s all he needed to know. What he needed to focus on now was Ser Aza.

The Warrior of Light, worryingly, didn’t stir once during Basile’s embarrassing entrance. He was sprawled out on his front, face pressed into the snow, looking like he’d been trying to crawl. Considering where he was placed, Basile had the grim realisation that Aza probably had been trying to crawl out, but had proven too weak to do so under his own power. Briskly, Basile leant over him, gently placing a hand on a too cold shoulder. There was a dusting of frost over his gambeson.

“Ser Aza,” he said loudly, too scared to shake him in case he jostled severe injuries, “Can you hear me? Are you awake?”

No response.

Right. Basile boxed up the flutter of worry bubbling up in his belly and ignored the pulling ache in his lower back from the awkward hunch the small pocket forced him into. Basile became The Dragoon, briskly checking over a comrade who had sustained injuries indicative of severe fall trauma. As part of their rigorous training, all Dragoons had some education in the identifying and treatment of the more common injuries from long falls.

Without moving Aza, Basile carefully patted him down with the back of his hands, checking them every so often for blood. He wasn’t bleeding from anywhere, but Basile identified an ugly, thick and frozen scab sealing his gambeson to the wound on his left side. It looked life-threatening, but Basile didn’t know if the bleeding had become wholly internal, or if the frozen scab had plugged up the bleed. For now, he left it alone.

Aza’s left leg was also broken, the shin bone had snapped and pushed partway through soft tissue, he could feel the bump when he’d gingerly checked his legs, and his right ankle was… sprained? That or lightly fractured. His tail seemed to have escaped severe injury, but Basile admitted ignorance on identifying anything wrong with that.

If anything, he was more worried about his ribs. One side was clearly broken, and when he gently left his palms touching his sides, feeling him slowly, shallowly breathe, the ribs flexed _wrong_. Something was very broken in there somewhere.

Finishing this horrifying list of injuries was clear head trauma, blood dried from an ugly gash at Aza’s right temple. There might be more injuries Basile hadn’t identified, but right now his immediate conclusion was: he was _fucked_. Basile only saw these injuries in those that had been thrown off dragons several hundred feet in the air and hadn’t been able to stick a solid landing. Aza must’ve tried to land on his feet, and if he succeeded in landing in a deep enough snow drift, he might’ve gotten away with a broken leg and a few cracked bones – as it was, Basile assessed that Aza must’ve struck something on the way down and ended up landing wrong at the very bottom as a result.

Basile sat back on his heels and considered.

Hypothermia was a real threat here. What little he could see of Aza’s face, hidden behind his loose, long hair sprawled over his face, he was alarmingly pale with glints of frost coating his eyelashes. Basile could not leave him here in good consciousness – it’d take too long to lead the medics down here to save him. It took Basile almost two and a half hours to reach here – with medics who couldn’t Jump, it’d take longer, and by then Aza would have either frozen to death or succumbed to his wounds.

In all honesty, Basile had no idea how he was still alive _now_.

Dismissing the miracle for now, he unshouldered his bag and carefully pulled out the stash of medical potions. He turned to Aza then, hesitating. He was wary of moving him, in case he had a severe neck or spine injury but… well, at this point, wouldn’t it be kinder to have him crippled than dead? Any damage he did now might be able to be reversed anyway but the Chirugeon.

Coming to a decision, Basile gently, carefully, rolled him over.

Aza instantly shuddered awake with a half-choked, delirious gurgle, his expression tight with agony, his eyes unseeing and hazy, and Basile acted as he would with any other wounded comrade, murmuring quietly, “It’s alright, I have you, you’ll be fine, you’re fine. I’m Basile, and I’m here to help you. Just going to give you some first aid and get you to a medic, okay? So, try to breathe, stay calm. I’ve got you.”

Aza wheezed, unable to do anything but shiver, blinking blankly at him with unfocused eyes as Basile considered the assembled potions. He might have to use a Phoenix Down. He picked up the X-Potion instead, wrenching the stopper off and instantly feeling the prickle of potent aether wash over him. This was powerful shit – Aza would be doped up to the gills, but…

Contrary to popular belief, X-potions didn’t require ingestion to function. With the weaker, over the counter potions, they needed to be drunk in order to effectively hasten cellular regeneration and coagulation, but X-potions were _strong_. It was usually enough to sprinkle it carefully over the damaged area and ingest small amounts only if internal bleeding was a concern. Those who just chugged the whole thing outright tended to vomit it back up within seconds, as the aether was so potent it sent the body into an immediate aether sickness shock.

Basile sprinkled most of it over Aza’s chest, deciding to deal with it later if some of the bones fused wrongly – while unpleasant, the bones could always be re-broken and healed correctly. He found himself settling, focusing, still murmuring soothing nonsense as Aza’s eyes fluttered shut, his breathing sounded less like stressed wheezing through a narrow straw and more human. He’ll leave the leg alone – that bone needed to be pushed back in before he started splashing potions over that, but his ankle could do with some healing, and the wound at his temple, and then he can start figuring out the mechanics of how to get Aza out, maybe after bundling him up in the blanket he had folded up in the bottom of his bag-

_‘crrrrrrrrrrrrreak’_

Basile went still.

The ice around them shifted ominously, a chunk of ice the size of his fist breaking off from the ceiling and narrowing avoiding his head. He craned his neck awkwardly, still stooped low, waiting to see if something collapsed. But after a tense, heart-pounding moment, everything settled again and Basile relaxed warily. Nothing th-

_‘CRRRRRRRRRK’_

Everything _jerked_ around them and Basile instinctively threw himself over Aza when something alarmingly and distressingly close cracked and groaned. The ice was shuddering around them, miraculously _holding_ despite how everything was shifting, but Basile knew it was only a matter of time until something gave. Shit. So much for a slow, gentle extraction, he needed to get Aza out _now-_

Another violent crack thundered around him, and Basile felt cold all over when he heard something _snarl_ – something close, something huge, something that sounded alarmingly, terrifyingly, like a _Behemoth_. It was echoy and muffled, though, but the cracking, the rumbling, the way everything was shifting and cracking that implied the unfortunately not-dead beast was mindlessly thrashing its way through the debris. The only fucking monster that could get away with that shit.

Basile moved fast. He pocketed the Phoenix Down, just in case, and another X-potion, shoving them into the pouches on his belt and securing them. He wrenched out the blanket from his bag too, and, muttering an apology for being so rough, swaddled Aza up in it. As well as keeping him warm, it kept his limbs pinned in and would stop him from flailing around and causing issues. Luckily for Basile, Aza was too out of it to do more than let out a pained, wispy groan, putting up a very pathetic, token struggle. Sorry, Warrior of Light, it was demeaning, but Basile promised to get you out.

“Sorry, sorry, you can kick my arse across the highlands later,” Basile whispered to him, and, bracing himself, “This’ll hurt, but you’ll be fine.”

He started to gently, yet firmly, pull Aza up into a Knight’ Carry-

-just as the far side of their pocket collapsed beneath the wildly sweeping paw of a furious Behemoth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> have some more lore bending!
> 
> and a cliffhanger. 
> 
> :3c

**Author's Note:**

> was bored so i was brushing up some unfinished fic on my harddrive and found this so hdjkasd enjoy???


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